A new door has been opened for Anglican communities wishing to enter the Catholic Church. I’m one of those whose eyes begin to glaze over when people talk of the governing structures of the Church in terms more detailed than “Pope, bishops, priests, religious” so I’m not totally sure how much further this goes than the arrangement of 1980 which established the Anglican Use. I suppose the key is the existence of a sort of Bishop of Anglicans: “pastoral oversight and guidance will be provided for groups of former Anglicans through a Personal Ordinariate, whose Ordinary will usually be appointed from among former Anglican clergy.”
Having said that, I’ll add that I feel a little like someone suffering from a fatal disease for which a cure has been found, but too late for him. But that comparison breaks down in two ways: one, I did not die, spiritually, of my hunger for beauty and reverence in the liturgy, but rather adapted so that I don’t need it anymore; you might say I killed that hunger. And that’s just as well, because, two, I have no reason to suppose that there is any group of Anglicans in my part of the world who would be interested in this. I think dissident Anglicans in this area tend to go in a more Protestant rather than a more Catholic direction, either back toward a sort of hard-core Low Church Anglicanism, or toward contemporary charismatic-evangelical Protestantism.
But whether or not I see any personal benefit from this, I’m awfully glad it’s happening. I wonder whether we dare hope for some movement in the mother country?….
Light On Dark Water 
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